Text: Anonymous, “Review of The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe],” The Independent (New York, NY), vol. 2, no. 60, January 1, 1850, p. 16, col. 1

[page 16, column 1:]

Editors’ Table.

THE WORKS OF THE LATE EDGAR ALLAN POE: with Notices of his Life and Genius. By N.P. Willis, J. K. Lowell, and R. W. Griswold. In two volumes. New York : J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall. 1850.

The name of POE is worthy of being enshrined apart in the temple of our national literature. As a poet, he began his career without a model, and closed it without a rival. He had chosen for himself a wild and gloomy abode on the confines of the supernatural world, where none cared to intrude. Yet to him the dim, mysterious objects of that world grew so familiar, that he would construct a tale or poem of such materials with the same ease, naturalness, and precision with which a good artist combines the most common ‘objects in nature. Dealing ever with the marvelous, he invested it in the creations of his fancy, with a reality clearly defined, and would introduce you into the halls of “ the Grotesque and the Arabesque” with the confident, 1 at-home’ air of the guide who ushers you by torch-light into the cave whose labyrinths he could thread in the dark. His mind was a rare combination of the imaginative and the analytic. Hence his power of imparting a reality to the most unnatural scenes, by minute, circumstantial details, and of giving to the wildest fiction the air of a mathematical problem. As a critic he was subtle and accurate, though not always profound.

But, alas for poor human nature — what a wreck of genius was Edgar A. Poe! A mind torn away from its center, enslaved by its appetites, groping in unbelief and despair,

Mr. Willis tells us that, though naturally amiable, quiet, patient and industrious, yet, “with a single glass of wine, his whole nature was reversed, and the demon became uppermost.” Mr. Willis very charitably regards this reversed character as “a temporary and almost irresponsible isanity.” Insanity it may have been, but not irresponsible when excited by his own act, whose consequence he knew. Could not his literary associates — those in whom he confided — those to whom he looked for favor with the public — by denying themselves even a single glass of wine, have persuaded him to deny himself, also, and thus have secured peace, hope and joy to a mind which dwelt apart in its own wretchedness and gloom, the prey of remorse and despair. But for this sad habit Edgar A. Poe need not have had his life-long struggle with poverty and affliction; and the literary world could well have dispensed with those dark, thrilling, fearful portraitures of human guilt and anguish in which his pieces abound, to have had their author and their original a temperate, happy man.

This beautiful edition of his works is published for the benefit of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm, whose tenderness and fidelity to him in all his sorrows and infirmities, were such as woman alone can show. Prefixed to the first volume is a speaking portrait of the author, whose face of beauty and intellectuality most exquisitely blended, looks pensively upon you, till you exclaim, Can it be that such a soul, from out the black raven shadow under which it fell, “shall be lifted — never more?”